The three themes shaping our Autumn Term Roadmap

Hilary Aylesworth - 11 November, 2022

Product updates

Category : Blog

The three themes shaping our Autumn Term Roadmap

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At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. And it starts by giving everyone the right tools and technology for the job.

We’re constantly evolving and looking at the different ways we can help support schools and MATs to thrive. In the Summer Term, we released:

• 42 new features
• 60 improvements to current features!

Click here to find out exactly what these features included.

In a recent survey carried out by The Key, Arbor has the highest percentage of customers saying they are “extremely satisfied” with their MIS functionality. View full report here.

Our product vision at Arbor is to ‘Give school leaders, teachers, admin staff and parents the tools they need to work faster and smarter – together’. This vision sits across our three development themes for Autumn Term: 

• Visible, clear, actionable data
• Easy to find, easy to use
• Work together, effortlessly

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The data that sits in your MIS is a powerful resource. We want schools and MATs to have this data at their fingertips, so that they can make data-driven decisions quickly and easily. To do this, data needs to be consistent, efficient and actionable. 

Here’s three key releases due in the coming months, which will help you make actionable decisions from your data:

• Refreshed predicted Progress 8 scores based on DfE updates
• View data on parental engagement in MAT MIS
• School staff absence reports in MAT MIS

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It’s not worth having an MIS packed with brilliant features if they are difficult to find or use. Our second theme is all about making sure Arbor continues to be the UK’s most intuitive MIS, for both staff and parents. 

Here’s my top three features to look out for which will make our MIS even easier to use:

• Biometric login to the Arbor App – I’m so excited about this one!
• View all your School Shop orders on one overview page, letting you easily see all outstanding orders in one place
• Greater visibility for parents, on the App and Parent Portal, to see what money they owe to the school 

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Collaboration is key to any school or trust, whether you’re joining up processes across your team or streamlining communication with parents. 

With so many exciting new features to come under this theme, I’ve given you my top five to keep an eye out for:

• Create and update bulk pay scales in MAT MIS, and pushdown to your schools
• New workflows for Behaviour Types and improvements to our behaviour comms templates
• Create custom report cards within Arbor
• Apple Pay and Google Pay on the Arbor App
• Integration with Pebble Cashless Catering

If you have an improvement or an idea for a new feature we should develop, we’d love to hear it. There are four ways you can share it with us:

• Comment on our Product Roadmap: Upvote your favourite feature and leave a comment describing how we can support you most. Upvotes and comments feed directly into how we prioritise and build what we’re developing each term. View our Product Roadmap.
• Come along to an ArborFest Feedback Forum: Every ArborFest, our Product Team runs workshops tailored to different roles and remits. We’ll work together to identify and prioritise the most impactful improvements and new features to build. We’ll be announcing how to register for our 26th January forum in the coming weeks.
• Complete the Customer Satisfaction Survey (NPS): Towards the end of each term, we send out a quick survey where you can have your say in how Arbor impacts your school day-to-day. We review all the data in order to understand what’s working well and where we can improve.
• Join an Arbor User Group: Our user groups require regular participation in meetings, testing features, giving feedback and sharing best practice. You can register interest in an Arbor user group via your Account Manager.

I’m looking forward to hearing all your thoughts and suggestions so we can continue to make Arbor the best it can be for our schools! And I hope you are as excited about our Autumn Roadmap as I am.

View the recording of our Autumn Product Roadmap Reveal webinar here.